On Knowledge and Development of English Lexical Causativesby Korean Speakers

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The causative alternation in English is semantically determined: change-of-state denoting unaccusatives but not activity-denoting unergatives can participate in the alternation. Surprisingly, manner-of-motion verbs, one subtype of unergatives, can appear in lexical causatives when accompanied by a directional complement. In contrast, the causatives in Korean don't seem to be semantically conditioned. Furthermore, Korean manner-of-motion verbs which are unequivocally activity-denoting unergative verbs fail to participate in the alternation and a goal complement can appear in the presence of a directed motion verb ka- in Korean. The main objective of the paper is to examine Korean speakers' knowledge of lexical causatives in English. Results of the study suggest that the learners generally know semantic properties pertinent to the causative alternation, showing their ability to extract abstract semantic determinants from the variable input. Nevertheless, the data reveal that the acquisition of lexical causatives with manner-of-motion verbs with a directional PP is delayed. Such delayed acquisition is accounted for by constructionists' views, the difference between the case of instantiation and of modification and by L1-transfer.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Abstract
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Theoretical background
• 2.1. Causative constructions in English and Korean
• 3. The experiment
• 3.1. Participants
• 3.2. Experimental method and materials
• 4. Results
• 5. Discussion and conclusions
• Reference